


At an End to All Seasons

by aldojlc



Series: The Red Wolf [4]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: A bit melancholy perhaps, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Or even dare I say bittersweet, Post Season 8, Wayyy Post Season 8
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-19
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-07-08 18:34:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19874176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aldojlc/pseuds/aldojlc
Summary: Three brief vignettes to close out The Red Wolf series.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This and the last series was a bit tough to write...projecting a character so many years into the future, changing her in ways that may seem drastic compared to where we saw her last in the story. But I hope it makes sense, within the context of the unseen passage of time.

**Sansa: 324 AC**

A raven haired child, a boy of close to three and thirteen, ran through the gentle summer gardens, seeking its prey like a wolf possessed. A wisp of yellow fabric, disappearing behind a vegetated corridor, and the boy almost tripped as he swerved, pivoting as he chased down the girl, both of them laughing as she taunted him from around another turn in the corner.

"I do think he's fond of her." The Queen Regnant of the Seven Kingdoms and Across the Narrow Sea sat, relaxing on the small patio overlooking the terraces, sharing a glass of Arbor gold with her new Hand, watching her son bursting through the hedges and flowerbeds, unable to catch the elusive brown haired girl, always several steps ahead of him.

"A raven from the Archon of Tyrosh," the Queen of the Reach said, rummaging her hands, still small and delicate after three and forty years in the world, through the pile of scrolls and letters upon the table, "demanding we vacate the Flatlands south of Pentos."

Though Sansa had never herself seen the crown Margaery wore during her own brief tenure as the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, she was assured that her new crown resembled the old one, comprised of interwoven vines and thorns, held together by one single rose in the middle, lacking only the accompanying antlers of the stag. But the occasion an informal one between the two women, Margaery I Tyrell of the Reach wore instead just a simple brooch signifying her unprecedented position as Hand to the Queen of the Iron Throne, as well as a vassal Queen.

"None of the Free Cities made any claim to the Flatlands until we took Pentos," Sansa said, looking up from her own scroll, a request from young Lord Damon Beesbury of Honeyholt for a position at court, one she was inclined to grant, considering she had briefly taken him as a hostage during one of her many past wars. "Apparently Tyrosh seeks to expand the lands they dispute over."

"And Myr," Margaery added, rubbing her head painfully. "They both fear any southward expansion by us from Pentos."

"They have nothing to fear in that regard," Sansa said, truthfully wishing to be rid of war for the rest of her life and reign, however long it'd last, "though I suppose they'd have reason to." To them, she must seem every bit the power hungry conqueror in the vein of Aegon or Daenerys, wolf or dragon making little difference.

There was also Norvos, whose aggression had shifted from mere mean words written on parchment to incursions by land and sea into Lorathi territory. That war she did envision happening, especially if the crazed priests made any threatening moves west towards Pentos. Which meant she definitely could not afford any additional wars breaking out in Essos. Did any of her conquering predecessors come to understand this rule, the more conquering, the more subsequent headaches, or was she uniquely the first to actually need bear the consequences of glory?

"You're still friendly with the Triarch in Volantis," Margaery suggested, Sansa herself already thinking of her brother-by-law.

"Talisa's brother. He's no longer a Triarch, but wields influence still in the city."

Margaery nodded. "I'll send a raven then, suggesting they'll receive favorable trade terms were they to put in place an embargo against Myr and Tyrosh. Lord Cerwyn can deliver the specifics." Her new Master of Coin came from the North, after displaying a surprising talent with figures, having managed ably the grain and treasuries for her brother over the years.

"Lys too," Sansa added. "I'll send some ravens north to Bran inquiring about the situation in the Free Cities, see if there are any weaknesses in the nobilities or triarchs. If we could have fomented tensions between Pentos and Braavos, without any Disputed Lands between them, I can't imagine it too difficult to get these cities snapping against each others' heels once more."

"She seems fond of him too," Margaery remarked, having not taken her eyes off the children below as they settled their diplomatic strategies in Essos. "I think Elenia may bring up the topic of marriage on her own, without any prompting from us old women. After all, what little girl doesn't want to be a Queen?"

"I could name a few," Sansa said, thinking of her sister, wondering what strange sights befell Arya's eyes at this very moment. Her eyes wandered, watching a stray butterfly, a creature more common to Highgarden than the North, dally briefly on a letter. Even before Margaery's appointment as Hand, they had made an effort to let their children play together, so as to form naturally the verbal agreement of marriage that had been discussed between them years before their births. Having spent five moons in Starkhall, and three in Winterfell before, with her brother's children, they would remain here for another two moons before Sansa and her husband took them through Oldtown and Dorne on her way back to Eddardton, all of them, but Rickon especially, watching her and her Hand hold court and treat with all the lords and smallfolk alike. Their hope had been that Rickon, her oldest, would naturally take to one of Margaery's two daughters along the way, the elder one being more likely of course, being only one year younger than he. "A blessing then, the wedding will be as lovely as the bride."

They both shifted their attention to Catelyn, at one and ten years of age, sitting sullenly in a corner.

"Your daughter seems low this morning," Margaery remarked.

"She'll be up once she takes her meal, along with some lemoncakes," Sansa said. Young Catelyn was indeed temperamental, though Sansa suspected she still felt intimidated in the presence of the older children, her only daughter much more comfortable leading the playmates her own age back in court, but always tensing up when they were on the road.

"Maybe she's shy," Margaery suggested coyly. "Do you think she may have a thing for Loras?"

Already assured of wedding her daughter to the heir to the Iron Throne, of course the Rose Queen would continue to press her luck in matching her own heir to Highgarden with the heir to Riverrun. Though Sansa smiled and nodded, she swore she would not let that happen.

"She hides her fierceness from all, except those close to her," she said instead. "Little Cat enjoys bullying the servant's kids in Starkhall a bit too much, girls and boys alike. I don't think she'd take kindly to submitting anyone, especially not a future King."

She swore she saw Margaery wink, as if to communicate to her without words, _it was worth a shot,_ and Sansa did not begrudge her, the game being the game, the two Queens being themselves, two women presiding over Seven Kingdoms and three Free Cities arriving at their positions not for any want of brazenness.

Margaery picked up another scroll. "An invitation from Roland Crakehall, for his granddaughter's upcoming wedding."

Sansa frowned as Margaery read to her the date. Lord Crakehall had been one of her earliest supporters, when she had been cast out by the Dragon Queen, offering her safe shelter when some of his fellow Westerland lords would have killed her or handed her over to Cersei. He was an old man now, and she had not seen him since her last visit to Lannisport two years before, another sad occasion.

"I'll push back the visit to Dorne," Sansa said, deciding. "This may be my last chance to see Lord Roland."

So many from her past were disappearing into dust, day by day. She found herself actually brought to tears at Marion Lannister's burial. Paxter Redwyne's ceremony she had managed to hold back her tears, but only through the consumption of nearly two bottles of wine beforehand. Davos Seaworth died less than a moon after she had just departed Winterfell, and she regretted that she could only send a raven expressing her grief towards the man who had fought with them to take back her home from the Boltons. Yohn Royce somehow still clung to life in Runestone, having handed over regency over the Vale to his own son Andar until Petyr Arryn came to age in Winterfell, and Sansa often dreaded the day she'd receive that raven from the Vale.

Then, in her more morbid moments, she dreaded even more the day she could hear such dark words about one in her own family. Arya she had not seen in three years, not since she'd set off on her third voyage west to explore the southern extremities of those islands she discovered, and she could only hope that Bran would continue to keep an eye on her from afar. As for Jon...he was older than her, and his health solid, but who knew how long the magic which brought him back to life to continue to sustain him?

Her first twenty years she bore through with a win of iron to survive, no matter the cost. Was this the price then, to watch all she knew, liked, and loved pass before her? Was survival really such a great prize, were that the case?

"Will Lord Robin be joining us for dinner," Sansa asked. The presence of her own exiled cousin always proved an awkward situation in her visits to Highgarden.

Margaery shook her head. "Back to the dungeons for him for a few fortnights," she said with a smirk.

"Who was it this time," Sansa asked, curious in a flighty sort of way.

"One of the serving girls," Margaery replied. "But honestly, I don't really care what he does, I've shared maybe all of two nights with him since Renly was born. He's getting quite old, you know. For me, at least."

"Who is it now," the Queen asked playfully. "Don't tell me it's Robard Ashford, he's such a bore."

"His brother Argil, actually."

Sansa set her scroll down, managing not to choke upon her wine, cheeks red, beaming jealously at the woman. "And?"

"The Queen is satisfied," Margaery said, feigning shyness before she went purposefully towards picking up another scroll, though she looked back at Sansa with a curious gleam in her eye. "If you're curious...I could arrange..."

"No," Sansa replied, shaking her head vigorously. "My husband is...plenty enough for me."

"We could trade," Margaery responded evilly, and Sansa wondered just how much she was joking.

"I think Beryn would die of embarrassment," Sansa replied, amused at how mortified her poor husband would be before Queen of Roses herself. And thank the gods he was young, and she selfishly wished that he, out of all people, could outlive her along with their children, because survival or not, she had seen enough death in her lifetime for more than one lifetime.

"You _are_ the Queen, it's your prerogative," Margaery cooed, and Sansa wondered whether this was the same tone she took when seducing her own lovers. "All the realm is yours for the taking."

It wasn't that the Rose Queen's form of court wasn't tempting, a row of young knights and lords all eager to please their queen. But Sansa thought instead of the long nights she enjoyed with her own husband after a difficult day, the two of them sitting by the fire, she threading new robes or dresses for their children, or lying in bed, her hand rested comfortably upon his knee, gripping him firmly as he read to her, whether from scrolls left over from the day she'd yet a chance to review, or some particular tome of law written for the Kings of the Rock she needed for a particular subject before the Small Council or, when her mind was truly overburdened beyond the point of human capacity, an older tale from perhaps the Age of Legends, telling of winged dragons fighting monstrous ogres, her sheer exhausting allowing her to listen to his words through the ears of the child she had once been.

"Beryn's the only reason I've come to enjoy...such things in the first place," she responded, shier than the most powerful human in the known world ought to be at such matters. "Gods know his patience with me is...godly, I suppose...I haven't been the easiest wife."

_I didn't even tell him I loved him until six years into our marriage._

Margaery was right of course, she could conduct her life as she pleased, like old King Robert had done, picking out fair lads from each and any of her kingdoms and across the Narrow Sea, solely to please her, to discard afterwards. But she could never follow through with such things, not when knowing that it would absolutely devastate her husband, and knowing that she loved him enough not to ever wish to see him so hurt, much less be the cause of it herself.

"I do envy you," Margaery said. Though they remained married in name for the sake of both their names, her marriage to Arthur Hightower was known to be ancient history for all intents and purposes, the heir to Hightower rarely leaving the Hightower since his return from Essos. And Sansa did pity the poor man, who had once loved her, and kept her safe through the Westerlands and, for better or worse, had been one of the key reasons they'd chosen to crown her in this very same castle so many years ago. Was it any consolation for him, however broken their marriage, that Arthur could one day live to see his own progeny inherit the Iron Throne?

"The things we'd do for love," Sansa said, watching her two elder children play below, her two younger ones accompanying their father on a ride in the nearby hills. Finally catching the girl, Rickon screamed in glee as he grabbed young Elenia Tyrell, then looked around and upwards mischievously, only to be disappointed when his eyes met the watchful gaze of his ever attentive mother. "The things I'd do for my children. Or my husband." Turning to Margaery, she wondered. "Do you think it could have been possible for you? Not Joffrey, certainly..."

"Maybe Tommen," the Rose Queen mused. "He was a sweet boy...in time, I could have grown to love him, to see beyond his kindness and innocence an easy piece in the game, for me to play..."

Her tone dripping with guilt, Sansa decided to let the subject drop. "I'll appoint Gormand Crakehall the next Lord Regent Across the Narrow Sea."

"Roland's youngest?"

Sansa nodded. "He'll be glad of it. The young man's clever, so they tell me. Perhaps he may one day follow his own father to the Small Council."

Besides the gold and prestige the Free Cities yielded to her crown, they also provided her a steady seat of patronage, their lordship a coveted position particularly for children of lesser houses would never reign Lord Paramount over anything. A successful reign over the three cities could prove their worth before the Queen's eyes, enough so for eventual advancement to a place in the capital. Margaery herself had even suggested the same for young Loras, so as to prepare him for his rule over the Reach, and Sansa thought a similar appointment for her nephew Grenn appropriate, when the time came.

"We ought to do something for Dorne," Margaery said, resuming their work as she picked up another scroll, reading it thoroughly this time around. "They've been awfully underrepresented in the capital since Prince Martyn returned to Sunspear..."

* * *

**Sansa: 329 AC**

"I won't repeat myself. There are to be no further changes to the Succession."

"You've said it yourself," Tyrion Lannister beseeched, his voice more agonized than usual, "he's too sweet for his own good sometimes. It will be too easy for him to be taken advantage of by others."

The Queen spun around to face her longtime Master of Law, her Hand as well for the years between the tenures of Marion Lannister and Queen Margaery. His transition back to his old seat was not as a demotion, but necessary in order to lay the groundwork in preparing the state of the realm for the day she would pass it off to one of her own. A stable realm, one defined by laws and justice and not the whims of men or women, lords or queens alike, that was what she needed Tyrion Lannister to forge for her, and that was what they argued incessantly over now.

"I'm not that ancient, he has years left to learn. Rickon is my heir, that is final."

While the maesters disagreed on the actual date her reign began, there was no dispute that she had lived more years upon the Iron Throne than years she had lived before it, memories of whatever helpless thing she had been growing more distant in her mind by the day. Most would have been chastened by the Queen's tone, fearing for their own lives, but not Tyrion Lannister who, like her, had long become inured to fear. The Half Man's hair and beard fell entirely gray now, and at three and sixty years of age, his had been a life lived longer than most, the last two decades of which he'd toiled, dedicated to her service, grateful as she was or not towards him, depending upon the day.

"I know you want Catelyn for Riverrun but...what about Robb or little Ned?"

"They're still children," Sansa replied, her lips pursed in fury.

"So was Rickon. So were you."

"They'll always be children in the eyes of Rickon and Catelyn."

"Look at Aegon the Unlikely...younger sons _can_ make great kings."

_"The line will carry through the eldest."_

Bran had said those words to her her last visit to Winterfell, the two of them sitting alone in the Godswood. His hair the first to grey out of all of Rickard Stark's grandchildren, her brother seemed distant as ever, even as he kept up with her regular scrolls seeking information about this lord or that magister or the like. Of her own reign he seemed to regard with some detached amusement, his only comments about politics being comparisons of her to some distant king of the past, sometimes referencing one neither she nor Sam had ever heard of from any of the Citadel's vast records. But there was still a Stark hiding behind those mysterious eyes, of that she was sure.

_"They would have called me Bran the Broken, and my line ended with me, but yours will endure; the line will carry through the eldest."_

"Robb has the temperament of the West," she answered vaguely. "He's the cleverest, of the bunch...he'll be the one who can fend off best all your rotten Lannister cousins."

"Then let him fend them off from the Iron Throne, not Casterly Rock," Tyrion argued uselessly.

"Really, Asha Greyjoy may be the most fit to sit on the Throne out of all of them," she remarked aimlessly, speaking of Yara Greyjoy's daughter, whom she saw grown and raised truly as a Stark. The small pond below, a paler blue than usual under the brittle autumn sun, took in their arguments in stride. Above them, the statue of Catelyn Stark observed them expressionlessly, one her daughter, one the man she tried to have thrown through a Moon Door. "She doesn't take any smart talk from anyone, not even Prince Rickon himself..."

"Then appoint her your heir," Tyrion said, his words infuriating her. "Who says the heir needs to be your own blood? You've seen, you ought to know better than anyone that sharing the blood of queens and kings does not make one fit for the throne!"

It felt like the hundredth time they've broached this argument, their stances unyielding and unchanged from the very first.

"Do you really think the lords will leave alone the ones passed over for succession, the elder sons and daughters of the Queen? Even if Rickon is content planting flowers in Highgarden for the rest of his life, they'll torment him with his claim until they force him into a war not of his own choosing! And what charity is it, for young Robb or Ned or even Asha Greyjoy to have to execute their own brother for a treason they did not even wish to commit?"

And why was she justifying the succession of her eldest child to him, when such matters had gone unquestioned through Westeros for thousands of years?

"I did not see all I've seen and fight all my wars for the sake of passing this throne off to a stranger's child!"

They stood, side by side, worlds apart below the newly finished walls of Starkhall...the legacy that she would pass down, along with her Throne, to her own progeny for generations and generations to come, a determination not even Tyrion Lannister could rip from her.

_"The line will carry through the eldest."_

"Besides," she said, her voice softer, "if Rickon is truly unfit, the electors will not approve the Succession."

"You're the Queen. You're powerful, you've sat securely on your Throne longer than Robert or any since Aegon the Unlikely. You are loved and you are feared and your reign is unchallenged throughout the realm...and you know full well that the electors will approve any plan of Succession you submit before them without a second thought!"

The idea had been Tyrion's own, that while the occupant of the Iron Throne would decide and dictate the line of Succession, it would have to be subsequently approved by designated electors, Lord and Ladies Paramount across the realm, even the Lord Regent in Essos, with the occupants of Winterfell, Highgarden, Sunspear carrying more weight in the election. The Queen herself ought to make up a third of the votes, Sansa had argued initially, and it had taken half a fortnight's debating for Tyrion to talk her into only three votes for the occupant of the Iron Throne...merely one more vote compared to the the sovereigns of the North, Dorne, and the Reach.

"Then the system works," she said through gritted teeth, her own voice carrying like a snarl even to her own ears. " _Your_ system, unless you want to admit it's flawed."

"Flawed it may be," Tyrion said, "like anything created by flawed beings like us. But if the Great Queen, as they're already calling you out in the villages, sets the example, then her wisdom carries down through the generations...even if her blood does not. What would you rather be remembered for? For leaving behind some king or queen ten generations removed from you, or as the Queen who set aside even her own blood and house for the good of the realm? Yes, there could be war if you choose a younger child, or one not of your blood. But there could be war too, if Rickon is a weak king, and his younger children more ambitious, the results more or less the same."

 _The Great Queen._ She assumed the moniker was just the invention of the flatterers or boot lickers. Even were it not, it was not a title she deserved, especially not of late, not since Margaery returned to Highgarden and she had called over Samwell Tarly down from Winterfell to serve as her new Hand. And by the gods, the would be maester ran the realm so well that Sansa, after so many years of reading so many scrolls that her eyes bled at the end of each day, found it remarkably easy to withdraw from much of her crownly duties, spending most of her time now riding in the woods outside of Starkhall with her husband, her rare endeavor into the work which once so occupied her only in keeping out a wary eye for potential threats to Rickon's succession to the Throne, or Catelyn's succession to Riverrun, or Robb's succession to Casterly Rock, or arranging for a suitable marriage for little Ned, one which would not threaten the inheritances of his older siblings.

"Everything, every deed, good or bad, every cruelty suffered by you or myself or anyone in this rotten realm over the last nine thousand years has been for the sake of blood. Why should I not be allowed to carry forth what's been carried forth by everyone before me? Why am I the exception, why am I to be the only one to step back and resist the tides and the gales? Tell me that, Tyrion! Why am I the only one who deserves this punishment?"

"Because you are strong, and you know better. Because _you are_ great, because if not you, than _whom_? Do you think a king like Tommen or Rickon could issue such words to be heeded long after their deaths?"

It was, in Tyrion's own way, the Half Man's compliment to her, as unacceptable as his message was. "No," she said, shaking her head, fighting back her tears. "I will _not_ be the exception. I will _not_ sacrifice everything my family's been through, I will _not_ sacrifice our future, not after I've done so much to build it!"

"Then the wheel rolls on," Tyrion muttered, not bothering to hide his disgruntlement from his Queen after so many years serving her.

"Fuck the wheel," she said, sparking his attention. "Fuck _her_ wheel...breaking it has never been my cause." She started pacing the ground. "I've freed slaves, haven't I, in Pentos, and Norvos? I've hurt slavers throughout the rest of Essos. I have saved thousands, tens of thousands of lives in all my realms, keeping the peace and taking care of the smallfolk like none have since Aegon the Unlikely, or even the old king Jaehaerys. I have reduced the power of the lords over their bannermen, their smallfolk..."

"Only to pass that power to the Iron Throne. Yes, I agree, for all his weaknesses, Rickon is a fine young man, and he'll make a good king, provided he has the right counsel. What if his son or daughter isn't, or their children? What if he's weak enough to be influenced by foul advice after he takes your throne..."

_"The line will carry through the eldest."_

"You will _not_ speak that way of my son," Sansa said, in a way that not even Tyrion Lannister could brush off as anything but a threat.

His back hunched over, a sign that the old man had finally argued his last, and part of her was disappointed, that he would give up on her after so little argument...that he would let her succumb so easily to her own excesses.

"I suppose we have nothing further to say to each other then, do we?"

But if it was a bluff, she had all intentions of calling it.

"I suppose we don't."

He walked away, the setting sun marking his last day on her Small Council. In the end, it had not been a castle he requested, but a boat to Pentos, where he would take up with the daughter of a young magister, a clever girl who captured his eye several years before when she traveled to the capital seeking favor for her family before the court.

Their last argument notwithstanding, the Half Man deserved more than any his rest and retirement, having served her continuously through the years, longer than any single one of her counselors. _Truly her greatest,_ she knew, as crucial as the many others, whose time had passed, had once been. As they parted, the thought occurred to her that, a sea apart, she would likely never see him again, and how tragic, yet how appropriate, it would be for their final moments together to be so awfully marred by _politics_ , out of all things.

"Tyrion," she called out, her first husband looking wearily back at her, and she wondered what he expected from her now, these last moments between their two intertwined fates...child wife and unwilling husband, Stark and Lannister, wolf and dragon's adherent...a Queen and her most trusted counselor. She wanted to wish him a good life across the Narrow Sea, to thank him for all his years of faithful service, to tell him that she could not have built this world to pass down to her children without his help, his vision, his sense of fairness, to bid that he write her regularly, to visit the capital had he the chance, that she'd ensure that the finest Arbor Gold made its way over to him in Pentos.

That hundreds of years from now, if they spoke fondly of her reign, it would be his name they spoke with equal reverence.

That, since her first days upon the Iron Throne, he had served as a conscience she could fully admit she needed more than just a few occasions.

But she said none of those things, the words dying in her throat. Staring down at the reflection of the old, copper haired woman in the pond beneath her feet, she wondered just how much the last month alone had aged her.

_The things I do for family._

"Give Alara my regards," she said simply.

Though the words were rote and lacked any true meaning in and of themselves, she imagined that Tyrion understood, through what she did say, the things she couldn't bring herself to say, after so many years together. The recognition in the fading of his eyes seemed to affirm her supposition. Or so she told herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Appendix.
> 
> A timeline for the events of the series.
> 
> 305 AC: Battle of Ice and Fire at Winterfell. Daenerys I Targaryen falls into a coma.
> 
> 306 AC: Conclusion of the War of Five Queens. Sansa I Stark crowned in Eddardton (formerly King's Landing) following execution of Daenerys I Targaryen.
> 
> 307 AC: Sansa I Stark visits Winterfell, as depicted in conclusion of "A War for Five Queens".
> 
> 310 AC: Tycho Nestoris visits Westeros, as depicted in "The Banker and the Red Wolf".
> 
> 311 AC: Birth of Rickon Stark to Sansa I Stark & Prince Beryn Dayne.
> 
> 312 AC: Birth of Grenn Stark to Jon I Stark.
> 
> 314 AC: Birth of Catelyn Stark to Sansa I Stark & Prince Beryn Dayne.
> 
> 316 AC: The commencement and end of the War Across the Narrow Sea.
> 
> And a chronological list of her hands to date: Yohn Royce; Marion Lannister; Tyrion Lannister; Margaery Tyrell; Samwell Tarly.


	2. Chapter 2

**Rosa: 359 AC**

Myr was a brilliant city. A city under siege is still a brilliant city, its buildings and monuments having done nothing to provoke the war themselves. In the center of the city she saw the great Red Temple, and envisioned the colored banners which would adorn its walls once the city was taken...purple direwolves, the flags of her father, Rickon I Stark, the Smiling King, and his mother before him, the Great Queen.

Though the blockade was easily accomplished, the remaining siege of the city was far more difficult to wrangle than most, its vast and plain topography posing a challenge to those who would seek to cut off the wealthy city from the rest of Essos. But diligence pays its due, and nearly six moons of trench work and careful planning had left the Princess Rosa Stark a starving, embattled city on the brink of surrender. The eventual end of this war would be a landmark event indeed, the first conquest for the Iron Throne across the Narrow Sea since the surrender of Norvos, a small break amidst the otherwise long years of peace marking the last three decades of the reign of Sansa I Stark.

_"My hair," she remembered her saying, lying in her bed, stricken by the sudden fever that would take her before the sun came up that morning. Her uncles and aunt had gone to sleep for the night, and her father taking Jon and Arya out to the pond, where they slept as well. Later, she understood her father meant to give her grandfather Beryn the chance to be with her alone, their last night in this world together, but Rosa had refused to leave her then, and her father, who would be King in days if not a day, let her have her way, as was his habit._

_"My hair," she kept repeating, eyes closed, stuck in her feverish nightmare. There was nothing odd with the Queen's hair, no longer the vibrant color that had given rise to her name, the Red Wolf, but her faded copper mane still remarkable in their color at even four and sixty years of age, despite the gray strands running through them._

_"My mother." Her words changed suddenly, alerting both the bright haired child and her grandfather. "My mother...my mother never lived...to see her hair gray..."_

_Seeming to settle in a deep sleep afterwards, Rosa allowed her own eyes to rest, curled up next to her grandfather by the fire. When she woke, he was sobbing, and she knew._

There were those who sought to compare her to her grandmother, if only for the superficial similarity in their hair color, hers a shade redder than her twin sister's, but Rosa had always shrugged off such nonsense. For one thing, more than a figure of legend and history, the Great Queen was her grandmother, and while Sansa I Stark died when she was yet but a child, Rosa struggled in her own mind to set apart the legendary figure, whose long and prosperous reign had been the only one known not just to herself, but generations of men, women and children across the realms, and the woman who, once out of sight of her proper lords, transformed herself into the doting mother, wife, and grandmother Rosa herself recalled from her fondest memories.

For another, her hair, while kissed by fire, moreso than both her brother and sister, tinged brown and blonde, depending on how long she grew hers out, signs that the Dayne and Tyrell blood in her veins were not entirely forgotten by the Gods. Besides, the red hair of her grandmother came from their Tully blood, yet Rosa allowed herself to imagine on some days the wildness in her own veins, born of snow and ice. On days like this, when blood was spilled yet again in her family's name, as they dragged the bodies of the dead past their hill atop the entrenchments for burial or burning, according to each dead man's customs.

"Twenty dead for us. Over forty dead for them."

"Good. We'll outlast them surely."

Her uncle Robb Dayne, third child of the Great Queen, Master of War for her father, the King, having taken her grandfather Beryn's name in order to inherit Casterly Rock, then marrying a Martell princess to reinforce the relationship between Dorne and the Iron Throne, a man of few words, except to her when they were alone.

 _"The spitting image of Arthur,"_ she recalled Mortimer Dayne saying, brother to the great Sword of the Morning himself, on her first visit to Casterly Rock when she was a child. Uncle Robb, a young man then, had regaled her with stories of her grandmother's wars, of which he was an ardent student. And while Sansa I Stark was famed to have won every battle laid before her eyes, she spoke little of them, preferring to lecture her grandchildren, when she'd the time, on the politics of the court and the ruling of the realm across two continents.

Though the lectures were meant for Jon, her older brother and the future heir to the Iron Throne, she and her twin sister Arya always tagged along, because any time they had before the Great Queen herself were moments they knew even at their young age to treasure. Jon _had_ to listen, because he was Rickon's heir, even though he would have rather have been training with the master-at-arms or riding out in the fields. Rosa listened attentively, because she worshiped her grandmother then, just as she still worships her memory stalking the grounds of the siege today, but she always hoped that the Great Queen would pivot instead to her wars and battles, rather than the laws keeping the lords and ladies and cities in line. Really, Arya was the one who truly absorbed their grandmother's words, her little sister, younger by only a few minutes, precociously seeking out lords and ladies in the court to practice her new lessons immediately after the lectures.

By the time they passed three and ten years, it was already apparently to all that when their brother eventually took the Throne, it would be Arya who would sit beside him as his Hand, if not sooner for their father. So what was the red-haired middle child supposed to do, except wander the libraries, pulling out tomes of the battles from the War of Five Queens and the Narrow Sea, and work to try and decipher those dense words, until her uncle Robb found her one day, toiling away at a subject matter she had no reason to love by age or station. Impressed by the girl's eagerness towards a subject matter that fascinated himself as well, together they drew the maps and recited the details of not just the Great Queen's wars, but the battles of the Young Wolf, the great Robb I Stark of the North and her uncle's own namesake, and after that, all the wars that came before the Stark and Baratheon and Lannister and even the Targaryen dynasties.

And why was she so fascinated by such an un-princess like subject? Rosa herself could not answer that question. Perhaps it was her own way of honoring the legend of her grandmother, perhaps she found it fascinating how a woman who never wielded a sword could have won so many battles and campaigns, enough to united all their realms across two continents. Or perhaps it was her own way of coping with her uselessness, knowing that Jon had the claim and the skill by sword, that Arya the cleverness, and her determination to be more than just some lady princess, gossiping uselessly, eating and drinking mindlessly until she was fat, lame, and old.

"Several scouts reported riders from the west," she said, filling Robb in on the details of the day whilst he fended off the skirmish at the city walls. "It could be a feint though, a distraction from the Tyroshi, while the real relief effort comes from the Volantenes."

"No word on movements to the south," asked another man, the sandy haired, half-wildling, quarter-Targaryen King in the North, Grenn I Stark, whom she considered another one of her uncles, complicated as their bloodlines actually were.

"None."

"Our outer trenches are sound," Robb said, placing his hand over his eyes as he scanned them, miles below their hill. "So long as they don't cut us off from the harbor, we'll last this siege longer than the Myrish."

They called her father the Smiling King because he was a congenial man, always courteous and gentle towards his subjects, though happiest tending to his gardens. They all knew how much he hated his own birthright, having to rule in Starkhall or Eddardton for most of the year, pining away for his annual escape to Highgarden, where he recalled the fondest days of his youth.

 _"Your mother and I, we fell in love there, before we even knew what it meant,"_ he said to them, often with Queen Elenia, daughter of Margaery I Tyrell, sitting in his lap, kissing her fondly on the cheek even as she and her siblings made faces of disgust behind their backs.

So while tensions rose and the hostilities reached their breaking point on Essos, the Smiling King was content planting his flowers and hedges, the gardens in Starkhall rivaling Highgarden's. Through sheer skill and wile the Great Queen had kept the peace in Essos through the end of her reign, pitting the remaining cities free from the Westerosi crown against each other, even as stray children of the magisters and bankers she'd ordered executed in Braavos and Pentos and Norvos migrated south, plotting their revenge, even as those nobles in Volantis and Myr and Lys and Tyrosh looked at their powerful neighbors to the north and west with apprehension, their own trade and wealth dependent on these foreign invaders who now occupied their once free neighbors.

So much as Petyr Arryn, her father's best friend and Hand, worked day and night to keep the peace, he was no Great Queen, and lacking the passion or determination of his king backing him in all the negotiations, the rest of her realm, her Uncles Robb and Grenn and Loras I Tyrell, Queen Margaery's successor in the Reach, all prepared themselves for the upcoming war, one which broke out accordingly, a mere three years into her father's reign. Growing then into her majority at six and ten, she begged to accompany her Uncle Robb to Essos as his squire, and despite her mother's vehement objections, the King, knowing how much she yearned to see the war firsthand, knowing how miserable she'd be left in Starkhall whilst her mentor and best friend, aside from her own twin sister, fought a Narrow Sea away, relented. And so she saw with her own eyes his encirclement of the enemy south of Pentos, a great victory that forced the Free Cities to agree to a peace all knew would be broken once they regained their fighting strengths.

"It's not men I worry about," Loras said, his reddish brown Tyrell hair matching her own, if a tad darker than hers, "it's the sun." Pointing upwards, he wiped the sweat off his neck. "Word of plague in the city...could just be to scare us away, but if it's true, they'd only need a few more skirmishes outwards like the one today before they can kill a quarter of our men without nary a battle."

If King Grenn was feared as the deadliest wielder of both axe and sword on both sides of the Narrow Sea, it was King Loras, the oldest of them all at fifty years of age, no dunce with the sword himself, whose cleverness was exceeded in the field only by her uncle Robb. They'd all grown up together, along with her father, three future Kings to be, and she knew how excruciating Jon's absence must be for him. But her older brother had never been the same, not since that bad fall at that battle before Pentos, she herself witnessing his pained ride back into the camp afterwards, sword hand lame for the rest of his life, her once vivacious and proud brother wilting into a shadow of his former self, a sullen, gaunt figure rarely seen wandering the hallways of Starkhall except in the deadest of night. It seemed so unfair to all, this melancholy son and heir to the Smiling King, once renowned for his prowess with the sword at even four and ten years of age, who now smiled for no one, not even their parents.

But there were yet secrets between the three siblings, and Jon did smile when they were together, a rarer occasions these later years. And so they both treasured this rare ability to draw the heir to the Iron Throne out of his misery, always spent listening to him recall fondly the happier days of their collective youth.

"We'll storm the city within a fortnight," Robb said, looking up from the map for their approval. "They must be reaching a critical point in their supplies."

"I'm still worried about a counter-siege," Rosa added. "We ought to attack first via the harbor. If our ships make way, we may ferry at least a quarter of our men in, while we devote the remaining to breaking through their walls. It gives us more time to ensure our rears will be unharassed, surely they wouldn't dally that long by then."

They all nodded their agreement, respecting her knowledge in warfare even as she herself was barely capable of wielding the broadsword against her hip. It had been, after all, her idea of a night march through the marshes upon the enemy's rear, forcing their retreat of the hill they held, that her uncle had adopted into their great victory at Pentos seven years prior, one which elevated her prestige amongst her father's counselors, even as the same battle destroyed her own brother's life.

"I'd almost rather the Tyroshi make an attempt on us from the west," Grenn snarled, always ready for another fight. "Our defenses are sound. Let the Myrish think us weak and counterattack, it may be our easiest chance yet at breaching their walls."

"Failing that, patience," Loras cautioned. "Our position is sound, yet we are surrounded on all sides by enemies."

All her uncles she could trust, their love not just for her father, but also their sheer adulation of the Great Queen's word enough to ensure their loyalty to her designated heir through the rest of their lives. Of their children, her own cousins, children of vassal kings, she was less sure of, though if anyone could keep them at bay, it was her sister Arya, so long as she remained by their brother's side at the capital. So it would be their roles, the two misfit younger daughters of Rickon I Stark, to keep secure their father's and brother's crowns, whether in court, or on the battlefield.

"Let them come at us then," Rosa said boldly. "The more we deplete their men, the weaker their own cities will be when the time comes."

"And the sooner they'll sue for peace when Myr falls," Loras said, agreeing.

Robb always counselled her patience, eager as she would have been to charge against the walls of all the enemy cities, one by one in succession. Most would have found their long friendship odd, the sight of the older uncle spending so much time with his pretty young niece fodder for much scandal were it not known in court that, though the Warden of the West married a Dornish princess out of duty, it was the company of the Dornish princes he enjoyed more in the night hours.

"Any reports from the captains," she asked. The four of them comprised a good council, two kings, a prince and a princess, all of them secure in their own footing beneath the crown, all naturally deferring to the Great Queen's trueborn son to lead them.

"A few smugglers made their way in," Grenn replied. "Maybe they brought in provisions enough to last them one day or more, but not a reason for us to lose sleep."

The King in the North was the uncle she knew least. She remembered him as a joyful young man, taking her and her siblings out riding in the hills outside of Winterfell, showing them all the hidden creeks and waterfalls of their grandmother's youth. But they went north less after King Jon died, little memory remaining in her for the legendary man many still called Jon Snow, except that a quiet man whose beard looked like it had been grey all his long life. And fewer still after their grandmother's death, her father preferring Highgarden when they did vacate the capital. And with the eyes of the throne turned south, her father's favor enhancing her uncle Loras's own power in the Reach, Grenn I Stark was capably building the North to be as strong as it had ever been since the days before her ancestor Torrhen knelt to the Targaryens.

_"Kings and queens in name only," the Great Queen repeated to them as she threaded matching dresses for her and Arya. "Their power comes solely from the Iron Throne, and can be taken away by the Iron Throne."_

All good principles when the vassal kings remained loyal to her father, and their bannermen in firm control of her uncle Robb. But he would retire back to Casterly Rock one day, or perhaps even Dorne, once his own heir came of age, and Rosa knew that the mantle of Lord, or rather Lady Commander of all the realm's armies could be passed down to her. Which meant that the retention of the realm's three quasi independent kingdoms would one day rest upon her shoulders. Useless middle child once, it had been her own initiative and zeal which now weighed her down with a duty, nay burden, that would possibly possess her until her dying day.

Absorbed in the wars of her present and future, she did not even remembering seeing the young rider, a Manderly based on his armor, approaching their council upon the hilltop, until he handed the scroll to Grenn.

"The seal of the King," he said, leaving the letter unopened and looking between her uncle and her. Robb gestured towards her, and she received the scroll from the King in the North, curiosity growing as to what would possess her father to divert his attentions for the rare moment, away from his gardens, and unto a war he cared little for.

Unfurling the parchment, she saw not her father's handwriting, but her own sister's. Eyes widening as she scanned through the words, her hands were trembling by the time she looked back up at the three uncles, all having just witnessed the ashening of her face. _Dark wings, dark words,_ her grandmother always said. Taking a deep breath, nearly choking on it, she looked down at the accursed letter to read the words out loud to them.

_"The King is dead. Prince Jon is dead. The Lord Hand Arryn is gravely wounded, the maesters do not believe he will survive to see the next moon. Ser Ilyn Piper of the Kingsguard committed the dead, betraying them as they slept. He was apprehended a day's ride west from Starkhall and will face the full brunt of the Crown's justice, once it has been decided. Ravens have been sent to Prince Bran in Winterfell to ascertain the full extent of the conspiracy, though the assassin has confessed to receiving Tyroshi gold._

_My beloved sister for life, my Queen this day and every day forward, under circumstances both of us will bemoan forever, the realm is yours now, and I await your bidding. The capital is secure, and I bid our mother remain at Highgarden until her safety may be assured._

_My beloved uncles, may you continue your loyalty to my father in death as you did in his life._

_Arya Stark."_

She blinked, upon reading her sister's name, and wondered whether these were to be her last seconds in life. Without a second thought, her uncle, now the Great Queen's eldest surviving son, fell upon one knee, the two other kings following his example immediately.

"Your Grace," he proclaimed, head bowed to his pupil in reverence, though many may still seek to proclaim him, the eldest male in the line, upon the Iron Throne which was hers now by law.

"Your Grace," Grenn I Stark of the North followed.

"Your Grace," Loras I Tyrell of the Reach followed after him.

Hadn't this taken her own grandmother by surprise, when they proclaimed her the first Stark monarch of the realm, at an even younger age than she? Would she be proud, seeing the same fate befall her granddaughter in a foreign land, amidst a brutal and harrowing war and such news of death?

The figures before her blurred, as the full realization of what this all _truly meant_ hit her like a wall. Jon, sweet Jon, hurt and wounded Jon, tall and rugged and cold and feared, who showed only her and Arya his wonderfully tender heart, whose own lameness and helplessness drove him to one day become a champion for the smallfolk...her big brother, the constant in her life for as long as she could remember, her and Arya's protector, even in his weakness...dead by the hand of a traitor. Her father, the King, too kind to be a king, who never wanted to be king, who never wanted this war, who could not fight his own fate, who loved his children and loved their mother and did his best to raise them, even as he struggled himself with his unwanted inheritance...

Was this how they felt, their grandmother and their great aunt Arya, when the Red Wedding happened, the last time their family had seen such a cruel culling?

Somehow, she was still standing, even as her knees trembled fiercely, even as her uncles, King Grenn I Stark of the North, King Loras I Tyrell of the Reach, weathered men in their prime, remained upon their knees before her, the second born, the girl with curly red-brown hair, who would have been the youngest child of King Rickon's had it not been a fluke of timing in their mother's womb, who never expected anything in life except to be eventually be married off to some haughty lord, once their father was satisfied she had gotten all the war and fighting out of her system...the wild girl Rosa, who wished to never outgrow her wildness...except she was now Rosa I Stark, Queen Regnant of Seven Kingdoms and Across the Narrow Sea.

"Parchment. Now!" The young messenger, face as pale as the rest of them, half expecting his own head to fall, being the unlucky bearer of this most dreadful news, almost leaped to the table to hand her an empty scroll, and she leaned down, scribbling furiously.

 _"The line will carry through the eldest."_ Soft words echoed through her head, and though she herself had never heard them uttered before, she somehow knew exactly who they came from, and what they meant. But it made no sense to her. Jon was the eldest, had always been the eldest, their big brother, who protected them from all the scary lords and ladies in court through their childhoods. And Arya was clearly a much better fit for the Iron Throne, with her natural affinity for politics and courtly intrigues. But she was younger, if only by minutes, and lay after her in the Succession, agreed upon by the realm, though meaningless they all believed the document to be, the only person in it of significance being Jon, the heir.

As she wrote, she wondered if their deaths had been painful. Had felt the pain of the sword, the pain of being betrayed by their own, or could they have passed through the ignorance of sleep into what lay beyond?

Finished, she held up the scroll and read her barely legible scribbling to her newly discovered subjects.

 _"My dear sister Arya, I appoint you Hand of the Queen. As for to the remainder of the Small Council, keep or discard whom you see fit, except our uncle Robb will remain Master of War._ " She looked up at him. "Provided you wish to remain."

"I serve at Your Grace's pleasure," he said solemnly to the girl he'd mentored for nearly half her life.

She continued. " _I trust you will pursue the justice of the Crown for ALL perpetrators on your side of the Narrow Sea, as I will on mine._

_My only request is they suffer._

_Rosa I Stark, Queen Regnant Seven Kingdoms Narrow Sea etc. etc._ "

Looking up, she addressed the messenger. _A northerner. Appropriate._ She wondered if she would ever see the land of her blood again. Or even Westeros. "A raven to Winterfell to our Great Uncle Bran." The old man of the Godswood, the last survivor they knew from the Great Wars, the last surviving of Ned Stark's children, who had seen the Night King and the Others with his own eyes. "I suspect the Myrish or Volantenes have their hands in this vile deed as well. Whatever names of men and women he sends my sister, I want them sent east too, so that I will be aware of all the true enemies of the crown."

She remembered the long funeral procession for their grandmother, thousands of smallfolk straining their necks as they passed village by village until they reached Winterfell, where they laid her body beside those of her beloved ancestors. They would bring her father home too, except Winterfell had never been his home, except she would not see it herself, not with so many wars remaining her to fight in this foreign land. And she would pursue them all, in all the Free Cities, as far as the Bay of Dragons or Qarth or Asshai if need be, even if it meant she would never see her own lands...her own sister...ever again.

"Your Grace," Grenn interrupted. The way he looked at her now was not as a vassal King, but as kin, as a Stark, who knew full well the tragic fates of so many in their family, even as those who survived reigned supreme across two continents. "I loved your father and your brother. Clearly not as much as you...but words can't describe..."

"Then don't," she found herself saying. Walking away from the table, needing a moment to hear her own heart beating, she surveyed the city below her, sure that many of those responsible for this crime lay within its walls.

 _Burn them all,_ she heard a voice whisper. _Destroy them in their beds, their houses, their hearths._

Then she remembered her grandmother's stories of the Dragon Queen, a near mythical figure who had saved the realm at Winterfell, yet nearly destroyed it after. The Great Queen always spoke of her not just with respect, but her words tinged with a fear she reserved for no one else, not even the sordid tormentors she endured in her early life.

"They did this, to distract us from this war," she said calmly, aware of the eyes of two Kings and the armies of two continents behind her. "They wish to provoke me into something rash, or cause me to even abandon this siege, in my grief." She turned, and by yet another miracle, her eyes remained as cold as the ice her ancestors came from. "They will not succeed. Nothing will change. We will conduct this siege as we have been, we will finish it, we will take the city in an orderly manner, and we will prepare ourselves for the next battle."

 _The_ Queen. Her father would not have named her for a flower, the sigil of her mother's family, had he expected her to inherit his Iron Throne. Even Arya, named after their warrior Aunt, the woman who killed the dead and discovered continents, would have served a better name. Perhaps it was the fate of the Starks, that their least appropriately named women would inherit the realm when they least expected it. Not that she could ever fill the footprints left behind by her grandmother.

"Would Your Grace care to mourn, or conduct a ceremony," her uncle Loras started, his auburn hair like hers, naturally curled, resembling that of the Queen Margaery's brother, his namesake who died when Cersei I Lannister destroyed the old Sept, the sight of his hair a reminder of the power in her own bloodline...a power she had never given thought to as a second child.

 _Stark. Dayne. Tyrell. Tully. Hightower. Redwyne. Even Martell_ , if the rumors concerning her grandfather Beryn were to be believed. And the fact that she and her own sister still unbetrothed or married evidence that there were few Great Houses remaining that their grandmother had not tied their family into.

She looked at her other uncle, her other vassal king...Grenn I Stark, the blood of the last dragon flowing inside his veins, yet named after a farmer's son, the dragon's blood mixed with the blood of one who had been known once as a bastard, and wildling on his mother's side...fitting for the King who ruled over the castle that birthed the Great Queen.

"Nothing changes," she emphasized again, "nothing which will cause us to conduct differently one detail of this war."

This war meant everything to her now, the city below representing not just a host of defiant merchants and slavers who would resist the power of the Iron Throne, but the memory of her own father and brother and Uncle Petyr, their places in history wholly defined by whether or not she would win not just this battle, but all the ensuing wars...that once Myr fell, their fellow conspirators in Volantis and Lys and Tyrosh and all across the western half of Essos be destroyed as well. They would all pay for this, she swore, they would all be punished in the eyes of the Crown's justice. _Her_ justice.

 _"Wage no battle unless you are certain of victory,"_ she remembered her grandmother saying, the sight of her son and granddaughter huddled at an late hour before a book recounting the War of the Ninepenny Kings. Though far from any expert tactician, Sansa I Stark had not survived so many wars without learning many of its lessons. _"But remember no battle is fully won, even when you believe all your enemies dead, witness all their armies fleeing, even with peace papers signed and hostages taken and enemies either bending the knee before you, or their heads decorating your walls."_

Her grandmother died in relative peace, surrounded by her beloved family in her last days, her sickness sudden rather than lingering. And her own grandfather Beryn, a joyous man who played with them and read to them and taught her brother how to raise a sword...a broken shell of a man after her death, living only long enough to write his own account of her life, including in the pages some of the secrets the Great Queen had not seen fit to tell anyone except her own husband. Reading those words after his death, Rosa often wondered at the child described in the pages, who'd been naive, who'd fallen for the southern schemes, who'd been helpless and tortured and used until her skin became steel and her name come to signify power itself.

How could she, a child of summer, who'd grown up beloved in the greatest castles, who'd never suffered until the day she became Queen, follow in her footsteps? Could she find a man she would love, a man who would not try to steal her throne, could she die peacefully, same as her, once all her battles had been won? Or was she fated to die alone, painfully and gruesomely in this strange land, for a doomed cause she could never abandon?

_"Beryn! Beryn!" Her grandmother called out, waking in the early evening, just after her father had taken Jon and Arya away and she begged to stay._

_"Granpappa," she yelled softly, tugging at his sleeves until he woke. Seeing his wife awake, he ran over by her bed and took her hand, calming her immediately._

_"I'm here, Sansa." He felt her forehead, and Rosa could see visibly his face wincing, feeling the fever burning fiercely through his beloved wife, knowing that the maesters were right, and she was not likely to survive the night. "How do you feel," he nevertheless forced himself to ask._

_"I dreamt of them," she replied, her eyes distant, as if it mattered little to her what remained of her own life. Slowly, word by word, she continued to speak. "My brother, banging his sword against a tree. My mother, hugging him, telling him he was ruining his sword. They were both...crying...and my mother...she said they would kill..."_

_It was then when she saw her granddaughter, hanging onto her every word, and she stopped. Straining her face to smile as warmly as she could upon her deathbed, clutching tightly her husband's hands, she spoke softly._

_"You're a dear girl, Rosa. You're as clever as any of them...you'll serve your brother and your father well...you and your sister."_

_"I'll try," Rosa had said, tears in her eyes. "Don't go, grandmamma...please..."_

_"You're wolves...the blood of thousands of years of Winter. Blood of the Young Wolf. The Quiet Wolf."_ _With what little strength remained to her, the Great Queen shook her head. "Forget me, Rosa. Every day I've...I spend hours remembering their faces...I swore I'd never forget them. Don't live as I lived...in the past. Not...if you want to make them proud of you. Of...all of...us."_

Blood had never bothered her. Sure, it had been a shocking sight to see, that first battle before Pentos, and her heart ached for all the suffering of her wounded and dead. But blood was just blood, bodies just bodies, her only real concern being for own brother, hurt in the battle. Her stomach steel, she dreamt no nightmares that night, nor felt any qualms towards returning to the field the next morning, riding out past the rotting bodies to scout the nearby hills with her uncle and see if the enemy was stupid enough to attack again. They weren't.

_I'm a wolf. I don't fear blood. I spill the blood of my enemies._

Standing above the city under siege below, she saw their Red Temple, a monument to their God of fire. She'd paint that temple truly red, she swore, not with fire, but with the blood of all her enemies, so that they could never worship the color again. And after that, the next one, and the next one, until she'd torn through all who dared to betray her family, until there was not a drop of blood left to be spilled from those who betrayed her family. They may have been southern children, her and Jon and Arya...except it was just her and Arya now, but Rosa of House _Stark_ , First of Her Name, swore that she would bring the howl of winter to all who'd dare defy her in this strange and ancient land.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These chapters have been strange ones to write, trying to project forward the woman Sansa would become as she ages upon the throne.
> 
> As she told Tyrion in the last chapter, breaking the wheel was never her goal. Unlike Tyrion and Daenerys, Sansa is not a revolutionary, but rather a noblewoman, a person of her station and time. Tyrion has pushed her forward, but however great her reign, she won't the one to break the mold of heretical monarchy.
> 
> Alas, I saw their breakup inevitable, similar to that of Frederick the Great, the embodiment of the mythical Enlightened Monarch, and Voltaire, a principle author of the Enlightenment itself, because ultimately, as much common ground as they may find in the other, there will always be irreconcilable differences between the dynast and the visionary/intellectual.
> 
> And yes, I think this finally marks the end of this series, with the conclusion of Sansa's reign and life, and a glimpse into the future. Her own obsession with prophecy, this time from her own brother/TER, driven by her need to memorialize her family, her lost loved ones, caused her to name as her heir a son who was ill-suited for the Throne, ultimately costing Rickon his own life, his son's, and his best friend's. Yet, Bran's words looks to endure through this unlikely inheritor of the Stark legacy, proving how fickle and unwieldly, yet true, the prophecy ended up being.


End file.
